The prevalence of mobile devices, such as cell phones, smart phones, laptops, handheld communication devices, handheld computing devices, satellite radios, global positioning systems, PDAs, and so forth has increased dramatically over the past few years. Simultaneously, the world has also witnessed an explosion in peer-to-peer networking for everything from data transmission to social networking.
The commoditization of hardware capabilities on cellular phones, especially general purpose computing platforms and global positioning systems (GPS), has fueled the growth of mobile social applications. However, the social applications are inherently limited by their reliance on current localization techniques.
Current localization techniques, such as GPS, perform poorly indoors and/or can present a significant strain on mobile device resources, including computing ability and power consumption. In typical indoor environments, the density of cellular phones with wireless interfaces that allow peer-to-peer communication (Wi-Fi and/or Bluetooth) is extremely high, and based on the success of Internet based peer-to-peer networking it is reasonable to assume a large number of users would take advantage of mobile social applications while indoors (e.g., home, office, school, etc.).